RENOVATION TIME
During election times we hear ourselves talking about changes and renovations which are needed in our current elections system to make it easier for more people to vote; to make the voting itself more accurate and efficient, and to incorporate all the nation’s potential voters in all time zone equal opportunities to participate.
Immediately after the election – win or lose – we hear no more about the subject.
The “ins” are, perhaps, too busy trying to recall exactly what they did or did not promise and the “outs”are wondering what went wrong with their plans to outdo the “ins.”Any changes in the manner by which they might have won or lost the election are discarded and will not be considered until another election process shows up obvious weaknesses.
Would some sort of a bi-partisan “Elections Reforms Committee” work?
I rather doubt it. Some of the “errors”in our present system are purposely there because on party or the other sees their being in place as an advantage to their side of the vote. A “committee” to suggest change is such laws has been taken before if rather weakly. What we need to do now to get discussion started, since many of the flaws are deeply party parented, is not a committee, but an officially designated “commission” to look at the situation and not only recommend but require the Congress to approve certain parts, if not all, as recommended. That might put some teeth in the procedure and help bring a few such suggestions become realities.
The system needs unification. The changes to revitalize our elections system vary in different section of the country.. I would be helpful, for instance, if all sections of the country had identical registration rules and regulations. Do you remember what you had to do in order to register to vote? Most of us do not. As I recall, rather vaguely, I had to appear before a local official, who also owned our local drug-soda fountain I signed my name on blank sheet of white paper and printed my address and my date of birth in block letters. What became of that page of vital statistics I never knew, but I've voted ever since in various areas.
Another change that appears to be needed is some way of allowing voter in the extreme ends of our nation from being influenced by the already-balloted East. The East has long accused the Western state of climbing on board the wagon of whichever party seems to be winning in the East. It becomes especially troublesome when such a western state then claims to have been the one group which won the election for the party involved, hence they demand, and get leadership roles within the party.
Reforms, are in order to regulate the actual time of voting; once again due to the size of our extended nation in modern times.
There are many others, and prominent among them, always, is the argument asking for the total elimination of the Electoral College concept in our government.
Let's get a suitably empowered federal commission to work on these and other potential modifications before it is too late. Weaknesses, denied and left untreated, sap the very soul out of any living body.
A.L.M. September 3, 2004 [c552wds]
